text: Some hydrogels are able to respond to stimuli and their surrounding environments. Examples of these stimuli include light, temperature, pH, and electrical fields.  Hydrogels that are temperature sensitive are known as thermogels. Thermo-responsive hydrogels undergo reversible, thermally induced phase transition upon reaching either the upper or lower critical solution temperature. By definition, a crosslinked polymer gel is a macromolecule that cannot dissolve. Due to the polymeric domains created by crosslinking, in the gel microstructure, hydrogels are not homogenous within the solvent system in which they are placed into. Swelling of the network, however, does occur in the presence of a proper solvent. Voids in the microstructure of the gel where crosslinking agent or monomer has aggregated during polymerization can cause solvent to diffuse into or out of the hydrogel. The microstructure of hydrogel therefore are not constant, and imperfections occur where water from outside of the gel can accumulate these voids. This process is temperature dependent, and solvent behavior depends on whether the solvent-gel system has reached, or surpassed, the critical solution temperature (LCST). The LCST defines a boundary between which a gel or polymer chain will separate solvent into one or two phases. The spinodial and binodial regions of a polymer-solvent phase diagram represent the energetic favorability of the hydrogel becoming miscible in solution or separating into two phases.